Rating:
Director: Steve Flynn
Producer: Kim Berdy
Writer: Steve Flynn
Director of Photography: Antonio Ponti
Cast: Joel Gertner, David Benson, Nicole Cerusi, James Huffman, Matthew Garber, Glenn Giardelli
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OF THE RINGS Rating: Director: Steve Flynn Producer: Kim Berdy Writer: Steve Flynn Director of Photography: Antonio Ponti Cast: Joel Gertner, David Benson, Nicole Cerusi, James Huffman, Matthew Garber, Glenn Giardelli |
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Review by: Ian
Golding
3/21/02
Short films sometimes have an ulterior motive; they're nothing but a calling card for a filmmaker, complete with flashy camera tricks, tired "insider" Hollywood humor, and almost no story. A lot of these shorts view a story the way many big budget filmmakers do. They view it as the appendix of the body of a film: useless and easily removed. Luckily, Bored of the Rings takes a different approach. Writer-Director Steve Flynn gives us a funny, smart poke at the ridiculous events that have been added to the Olympic games in recent years, and uses archetypes from the games as a basis for some well-done characters.
The short takes place within a network show covering the Olympics. Between such events as towel folding and freeze tag, (at which the Norwegians and Finnish are impossible to beat) we go live to the final rounds of Men's Penmanship. Commentators David Brookshire (ECW Wrestling fans: Yes, it's that Joel Gertner, the "Quintessential Stud Muffin") and Josh Ambrose, (Benson) who is a former Penmanship champion, give us the play-by-play. The contestants are American Jo-Jo Tethers, (Giardelli) who performs the words "Rawhide Daydream" in perfect calligraphy, dressed in cowboy attire and sporting a toy horse. Next up is Dmitri Prolnikov (Garber), the reigning Russian champion, cracking a whip before his entry, "Barnum & Bailey." Dmitri has trouble with the dismount on his "Y," leaving the door wide open for Australian Callum Brodie (Huffman), a former X-treme hand writer, whose out of control style could go either way, especially considering his weak choice of words, "Bloomin' Onion."
The thing I really liked about this short was that the jokes kept coming, and Flynn doesn't rely on shock humor to make it funny. The whole thing has such an absurd air to it that you can't help but laugh. The commentators are gravely serious about their sport, and it's not hard to find parallels to the life and death attitude that figure skating announcers put forth every four years. The actors do a great job of parodying types of athletes present at every Olympics: The Effeminate American, the Flamboyant Russian, and the "black sheep" of the event, complete with a devil-may-care attitude. When Brookshire talks about the changing of the penmanship guard, I flashed back a few months to America's love affair with Apolo Anton Ohno, the young American speed skater. Flynn's Bored of the Rings is timely and funny, and it doesn't hurt that it's also got good production values. Director of Photography Antonio Ponti gives the short the perfect network sports coverage look, then gets out of the way of Flynn's humor. There are no goofy camera angles here, only ones that we might see in a normal telecast.
Bored of the Rings is currently running the festival circuit, having
won "Best Comedic Short" at the F4 Film festival, as
well a Best Comedy Short at Worldfest, Short Film at Slam New
York, and becoming an official selection for both Aspen Shortsfest
and the Newport Beach Film Festival. If you want a funny, intelligent
short, make your way to a film festival near you and check out
Bored of the Rings.
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